Also, if you're going to have extra versions of every page, I'd recommend using your robots.txt file to disallow spiders from accessing the text version. You don't want the search engines finding duplicate content.

I'm sure you only mean that as long as the other page(s) is not flash or frames or 100% graphics. In which case you would want the SEs to read the text page and not the original page.

It seem more likely to me that if someone is doing a text only page it is probably because they think they need to do it for the SEs and would want it spidered.

You are correct and not a doubt about it. BUT try to explain that to a customer who is paying you big bucks. You got to show him something. Sitting on your hands is not an option when starting out with a new customer. Basically I do the submitting for free after I have been paid of course. It is just good PR to show the customer you are doing something.

How do you show the customer you are doing this? Do you sit at his desk and let him watch?

Yahoo really irks me paying them the $299.00 bucks, but they aresorta like the big gorilla, if you know what I mean.

I don't recommend submitting to Yahoo at this point. Right now, most of their listings come from Google, so the directory listing is superfluous. Moreover, we really don't know what the future holds for Yahoo what with all the purchases they've made lately, so I worry that if someone pays to get into their directory now, they may find in less than a year that it's displayed even less than it is now.

And in answer to your question Bob: I was going on the assumption that the site had an HTML version and a "text" version which would basically be the same thing without formatting, for printing purposes. That's why I recommended that one version be disallowed by the robots.txt. Of course, I have been known to be wrong before. If it's Flash vs. HTML, it's a completely different situation.

Compar, Actually, I have. I still say it is just good PR to show the customeryou are doing something when you are questioned. Why not? What do youhave to lose by educating him? I can make more money from an educatedcustomer than from one that is not. Several times I have "used their desk"for Yahoo because I don't want to use my credit card. Once was forAltavista mainly to indicate SEO took time. This same guy pushed into myface a piece of spam that basically said SEO could be done for $20 dollars.

Translated in this guys thinking it means it should only take a few minutes sowhy am I charging so much more? You should know that some people areso much harder to work with than others and this guy is a real nut.

As far as Yahoo goes I always suggest we not spend the money for all thereasons that have been discussed so far. However, if our armchair SEOrequests inclusion into Yahoo and wants to pay for it and a couple of other,I don't believe it will hurt him. Also, (another debate) I believe it is faster inthat you will see listings sooner.